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THERE'S nothing like nice new, modern windows: they operate easily, the glass is perfect, and they don't need painting. So what kind of crazy co-op would spend as much money restoring its century-old wooden windows as it would take to buy new ones?

''We're a very strange group of people,'' said Wallace Kaminsky, the architect who is supervising the restoration for his fellow shareholders in the 1892 McIntyre Building, at 18th Street and Broadway.

In 1892, Ewen McIntyre, a prominent retail druggist at Sixth Avenue and 55th Street, hired Robert H. Robertson to design an 12-story building to replace his branch store on the northeast corner of 18th and Broadway. Mr. Robertson, at that time known for chunky Romanesque-style structures like the old Y.W.C.A. at 7 East 15th Street, loosened up with the McIntyre Building, perhaps because of its height.

The ''A.I.A. Guide to New York City,'' by Norval White and Elliot Willensky, describes it as ''unspeakable eclectic: a murmuration of Byzantine columns, Romanesque arches, Gothic finials and crockets -- the designer used the whole arsenal of history in one shot.'' Its tower at the 11th and 12th floors is a startling touch on a commercial structure.

Mr. McIntyre did not occupy his namesake building, but rather rented out the space, apparently as offices. By 1930 the building was dominated by china and textile representatives, apparently mostly wholesalers.

In the mid-1970's a group that included artists, potters, photographers and an architect bought the building and informally converted it to a co-op. At that time, it had no residential certificate of occupancy, making it illegal to live there. Rick Globus, an artist and photographer, was the first of the new group to move in, buying the entire fourth floor for $17,000. Some units in the building now sell for close to $1 million.

Robert and Ursula Garrett moved into the corner space on the seventh floor in 1977; they have sweeping views from Union Square south to the Woolworth Building. Their space had been an illegal nightclub, the Cobra Club, and they had to clear out a glass cage that had been used to display snakes, along with snake skins that escapees had left in various nooks and crannies. Mr. Garrett said that snakes were spotted in the building for years afterward and that the first bylaws specifically prohibited exotic pets.

The Garretts run a public relations and marketing firm from their apartment, which they have built themselves -- they made the antique-looking trestle table in their sunny kitchen from oak salvaged from an old plumbing chase. They have a collection of announcements dating from the period when artists in the building ran communal open houses. The building was officially converted to cooperative ownership in the 1980's.

The entry to the McIntyre Building is a battered aluminum door, but it leads to a mosaic-tiled lobby with an inset banner reading ''MacIntyre Building,'' apparently a spectacular typo, since period accounts spell the name of both the building and the druggist without the ''a.'' The main stairway soars to the top in the shape of a half-oval, but other than that, there is little original detail in the building, save for some wide pine floors and some nice ironwork.

Now the co-op is planning to clean the exterior and to restore the huge wooden windows. That's an unusual decision, as evidenced by the large number of companies that advertise their expertise in replacing old windows, but few that want to fix them.

MR. KAMINSKY said that some of the windows were close to falling out, and the co-op had considered new windows. But he said that when one major manufacturer couldn't replace such large windows -- those in the Garretts' apartment are six feet wide -- the board decided on restoration instead. The building's contractor, Restoration Management Services, specializes in repairing wooden windows. Jim Hicks, its president, said that his company would remove all 180 pairs of sashes, six to eight at a time, and repaint them in the shop and restore the frames. The repairs will take a couple of weeks for each batch, and in the interim, plywood sheets with clear plastic inserts will cover the window openings.

Mr. Kaminsky said the cost of the project would be $1,000 to $2,000 for each of the windows, depending on size and needed repairs, about the same cost as new aluminum windows but less than new wooden ones. He added that the co-op would pay for the building cleaning and window restoration without raising the maintenance. With its new certificate of occupancy, the building was able to refinance, doubling the mortgage to $1.5 million and dropping its rate from 13 percent to 7 percent.

The McIntyre Building is in the Ladies' Mile Historic District. Its windows are now painted black, but Terri Rosen Deutsch, the spokeswoman for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, said that the restored windows would have to be painted in the original colors, to be determined by microscopic examination. Judging from old photographs, the original windows appear to be a light color, perhaps buff, matching the original limestone and light brick.

Mr. Kaminsky explained the choice of repairing the wooden windows by saying, ''We're really concerned about what we look like.''

In Mr. Globus's apartment, the pine windows and surrounding oak paneling gleam like library furniture. ''I spent two years of my life, stripping 100 years of paint off my windows,'' he said. He has also stripped the original brass window locks, which are brawny enough for a battleship.

Mrs. Garrett said that initially, she had mixed feelings about restoring the windows. Then, pausing to look out across Union Square, she reconsidered and said, ''You know, it would really be a shame to lose the old glass -- they're part of the building.''

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A version of this article appears in print on , Section 11, Page 7 of the National edition with the headline: Streetscapes/1892 McIntyre Building; Shake, Rattle and Roll: Restoring Vintage Windows. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe